Mad Max Turns to Women's Tennis

By

Allen Barra and

Allen St. John Special to The Wall Street Journal

Updated May 21, 1999 1:09 a.m. ET

Who's the best women's tennis player in the world right now? It depends on whom you ask. Ask the Women's Tennis Association computer, and it's no contest: Martina Hingis. But our computer, Mad Max, and the Max Match rankings, which we're introducing today, suggest that the dogfight at the top is so close that even a Cyclops line-calling machine couldn't see the gap between Ms. Hingis and her closest rival, Venus Williams.

First, a little background. In the WTA system, ranking points are carried over for a year -- the...